Improvisation & “The Circle”

The most useful and visual tool that a guitarist can utilize when practicing improvisation is a Circle of 4ths/5ths: a diagram thats used to outline every key, it’s relative minor, and intervalic relationships (this will come in handy toward at the end of this blog). I’ve attached a specific one as the header of this blog which I’ve found to be the most useful as it also includes an outline for each of the 7 scales tones for every key! 

A helpful exercise is to practice redrawing the circle to drill yourself and a bonus mnemonic device I read years ago (from Richard Lloyds “Alchemical Guitarist” Guitar World column) is known as “2 phone numbers”:

147-3625 (cycle of 4ths)

152-6374 (cycle of 5ths)

Now that you have your Circle you can more efficiently set aside time to practice improvisation.

A simple exercise to start with is pick a key and find a steady tone or ambient pad to practice chords, triads, scales, or individual notes over. This will help you gain a clearer understanding of harmonic relationships. This will also help you understand how to better elicit emotional responses and evoke distinct feelings when improvising.

There are 2 schools of thought (chord scale & chord tone) when approaching improvising, a quote from Berklee.edu : “Using the chord-scale approach gives improvisers (especially less proficient ones) greater melodic and rhythmic mobility (i.e., they can improvise pitch sequences in eighth notes, triplets, sixteenth notes, etc.). Whereas chord tones must be played in leaps (minor third intervals or wider), a chord scale can be played in steps (major and minor second intervals), and consecutive steps are much easier to play fast and accurately than consecutive leaps. In general, less-experienced players are also familiar with scales and scale patterns than chord arpeggios from practicing technical exercises in method books and, therefore, prefer to use chord scales for improvising”

You can experiment with pentatonic scales, triads, and arpeggios to focus on chord tones or shift to diatonic scales or non-traditional scales to experiment with the chord scale approach. But this is the time to experiment and gain insight of intervalic relationships. This is also the time to determine:

1. What you’re hearing

2. What you would like to say

3. What your reply is

4. How you articulate your response

Understanding the relationship between harmony and melody is an integral part of creating, learning, and appreciating music. I can’t implore you enough to dedicate time to train your ear to recognize the harmonic relationships of intervals and their role in writing melodies and harmonies.